Comments

Jason – No harder for me than for anyone else. I was born with a Buddhist conscience though into a society that was not loving. There are still lots of folks today who terrorize their kids with violence; that hasn’t changed. What has changed is our laws and culture. I poor pity those ISIS kids being brought up tp behead first their dolls, then their pets, then the fellow humans. That is happening in real time and in their society, it is legal, accepted and encouraged.

And I pity our kids who will have to compete with them in the global market. I’d like to see less Disney taught our kids and more reality. Prepare them better – not with hard hearts but with self-discipline – to deal with what is coming.

Yees Joan, it was hard for some, yourself included… But can you really say things were ALL bad? Granted, I wasn’t even around at the time, but SOME of the VALUES and IDEALS would be BENEFICIAL in today’s world. Like having your children home at a decent hour. Or having respect for your elders (if they are deserving of such). Or if some of the disciplinary ways were still legal, maybe we wouldn’t have such an abundance of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells. I’m not saying it was ALL perfect back then, but some of the old ways could be used today, for sure.

I would not repeat a fifties childhood for anything. I found it badly lacking in human compassion, so shortly after the two brutal wars that so badly scarred so many of our parents.

“things” weren’t better then. Society had the same range of experience bounded by good and bad that we have today. Things are different today, yes, but certainly no worse for children.

Throughout my whole childhood, I chronically blew bloody, infected scabs from my nose because my whole family were heavy smokers. The bones of the kid next door didn’t grow properly because both his folks were serious alcoholics and because in those days, no one even considered intervening to properly feed this kid. At the church I attended, adolescents were encouraged to have sex and as I valued virginity until marriage, I was a misfit. Years later, one of the ministers was disciplined by church authorities for his part in encouraging kids to have sex in the church but no criminal charges were ever laid. And our neighborhood was classified upper middle class.

Sure, you could ride a motorcycle without a helmut. And if you got disabled in a crash, you were expected to just shut up about it.

All kids I knew were accosted by at least one pedophile. A naked man opened his coat in front of us girls one day on the way to school and offered us his erect penis – we screamed and ran – and another time, a man tried to put his hand up my skirt in a movie theatre. No one even dreamed of calling police or making a fuss. I didn’t even tell my folks.

My mother told me her friends brought home the babies they didn’t want, put them in the crib, covered them with heavy blankets, closed the door, waited until the thing died, then rolled it up in newspaper and threw it out with the trash. No abortion, you see.

I never understood cruelty to animals or to humans and was greatly affected by vaious executions including Toronto hanged Coffin who the Globe reported took 28 minutes to die and Chester Carryl whose contentious execution my brother and I followed on radio. My dad advocated with great gusto to hang 14 year-old Stephen Truscott and I wrote my first protest letter to my elected MP to lobby for the abolition of capital punishment.

I let go a shoebox of baby toads a fisherman had caught for bait. I simply couldn’t stand the thought of him impaling their innocent live beings on metal hooks. I was no lover of fur, despite the fashion.

Today things are no better and no worse. Different, sure, but different is good as change is the one constant we can count on in life.

Ahh the memories of growing up in the fifties. Looking back I know it was a carefree existence full of fun and laughter. I also remember that there was always someone we could call on for help or go to if we were afraid of anything. It wasn’t always ones parents, it could have been a friends older brother or even an older sister, or a neighbour or almost any adult.
I/we had fun growing up, I/we really did.

When you say things were better in the past some will say it is not so. But the old days were better, We did not have a lot of THINGS that we have today. As kids we would leave the house in the morning and home for meals and after that be home by dark. We had a curfew in m y town and it was the town fire b ell and rang at 9 and everyone under 16 had to be home. At the bell kids would be running from all over heading home. Under todays standards that would be against our rights and freedoms. I still felt free. We made our own entertainment and fun doing it. The kids in the area would be playing ball or kick the can. There was more respect for people. People stood by their faith in God. It was an all around good way of life. If you did not live in the 50’s you missed out.

Was it not wonderful back then when a boy was a boy and a girl was a girl where children played together and were giving the responsibility to tend for themselves. When a man asked a lady for a dance and wasn’t accused of rape for asking. When people could go out to dine and enjoy themselves with a nice after diner cigar. Where a youth could jump on his bike and ride without fear of being fined by the pillagers and plunders (the cops). We will never know these days until our country goes bankrupt and we can no longer afford these socialists.

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